


Third Day of Christmas - Let It Snow

by unjaundiced



Series: Holiday Headaches [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Fic, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Humor, Ninjas Can't Do Anything Right, Pre-Slash, bad friend, bad role models
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5639896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unjaundiced/pseuds/unjaundiced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A winter storm blows through Konoha and Kakashi invades Iruka's home to steal his place at the kotatsu. He invites Naruto and Sasuke as part of his invasion team and brings... CHOCOLATE! This time, they get it mostly right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Day of Christmas - Let It Snow

Iruka blustered through the door, snow flurries bursting in around him on cold fingers that clutched at his clothes and whipped his hair into a wild tangle. Halfway home from the Academy, a light drizzle had given way to grey bombshells of watery sleet which had soon morphed into white flakes that promised a winter wonderland of more trampled mud and dingy slush piles. He had not been amused at the orphan wind that seemed to follow him the whole way home, chasing him down the street, in and out of doorways, stealing conversations he tried to have as he passed by people he knew. A particularly strong gust had pushed between his legs, startling him and sending Ebisu-sensei toppling into a particularly grungy looking pile of grey-brown snow, though what the tokujo had been doing crouched under the tangerine stand Iruka had been standing next to was beyond him—probably putting the “tokubetsu” in “tokubetsu jounin”.  
  
The loose tail of Iruka's scarf came loose and danced around his head before smacking him wetly across the eyes as he put all his weight into forcing the door closed. The wind seemed to toy with him, swelling and receding like the chest of a giant beast, pushing back strongest when he shoved the hardest. He grumbled under his breath as he felt one of his boots slip, slick from the mud, found purchase and gathered himself to heave one last time. Suddenly the wind reversed itself and with a great sucking gasp, the door slammed shut and Iruka fell forward.  
  
“This weather is more moody than Anko when dango isn't in season anymore,” he muttered to himself as he gingerly tugged off his boots.  
  
The floor was a wreck of mud tracks and slides, puddles of water from melting snow, and the severed head of a gingerbread man he and Kakashi had cut from the gingerbread Sakura had given them for Naruto rested at the foot of the umbrella stand, staring accusingly with sakura mochi eyes—eye rather. Kakashi had eaten the other on the way out the door.  
  
To say that Naruto had been lucky to have gotten any gingerbread at all was an understatement. Kakashi had made the inarguable point—indeed all of his points seemed to be inarguable, no matter how unreasonable they seemed—that they should be allowed to sample what the result of their hard work _should_ have been. That had led them to nibbling on the spare bits of gingerbread left over from trimming the moulds, then to consuming the shapes that were probably not Naruto-appropriate—like the choko shapes, _Icha Icha_ book shapes, and a katana shape that, when cut, squashed the haft section of the gingerbread so that it looked a little more like a part of male anatomy than a sword and Iruka was determined that Naruto would _not_ go around telling everyone that his beloved Iruka-sensei had given him a delicious _chinko_!  
  
They'd gone so overboard with their _sampling_ and _taste testing_ that they'd had to fill the holes they'd rat-bitten out of “safe” gingerbread with random snacks from the cupboard and had gone overboard yet again, competing to see who could make better looking designs. It didn't help when Kakashi, for some reason, had suddenly found himself with a voracious sweet tooth and had horded all the puffed kinako and senbei that Iruka had been busy snacking on. The rather shameful game of jan-ken-po they'd ended up playing to determine who would get to eat the snacks had been pathetically one sided when Iruka realised Kakashi was cheating with his Sharingan and had decided to end the shenanigans by simply _sitting_ on the jounin while he'd made outrageously joyful sounds as he ate the kinako puffs one by one, moaning as each melted on his tongue. He'd been surprised by how quickly Kakashi had given up at that moment, though the jounin had retaliated by sneaking bits of sweets from the gingerbread when he thought Iruka wasn't looking.  
  
Iruka smiled slightly as he reached down to pick up the one-eyed gingerbread head, brows crinkling in confusion as the floor moved beneath his boot. The tiled floor shifted and wrinkled as he shifted his foot back and forth and he frowned as he tossed the gingerbread head up and down thoughtfully. He spotted the loose corner of patterned oilcloth curling up from where it had been nestled against the wall and snorted. Kakashi had covered the tile flooring of the genkan with something that _looked_ like tile flooring to protect the _existing_ tile flooring from getting dirty. His day was looking better already.  
  
Iruka thanked the gingerbread head that reminded him of Kakashi, folded the soiled cloth around his boots to contain the mud and padded gingerly down the cold hallway in damp feet, wet socks clutched in one hand, gingerbread head Kakashi in the other.  
  
Shisha-kun and Ukki-san, whom Kakashi decided should stay with his friend, wriggled in greeting as he entered the room, sending dim shards of light flashing across the room as the miniature weaponry moved. On the broad spread of Shisha-kun's branches, a little gingerbread scarecrow and dolphin danced together. The jounin couldn't bake for all the books in the _Icha Icha_ franchise, but he could dry, preserve, and poison foodstuffs with the best of them. The little “gingerbread friends”, as he'd taken to calling them, would be together forever (and keep Shisha-kun and Ukki-san company when the shinobi were away at work).  
  
“Tadaima, boys,” Iruka waved towards the plants, nodding the gingerbread head Kakashi as well. It was comforting to have someone to return home to, even if that someone was a tree and a possible-shrub-aspiring-to-be-a-tree.  
  
He lay his socks and scarf over the grille of the space heater to dry a little and hung his damp vest on the line above that. He turned on the electric kettle he kept on the ground next to the kotatsu, stripped off his satchel and prepared to sit. A distant knock stopped him short and he sighed, rising from his half-crouch.  
  
“I'm coming,” he called, retracing his footsteps and grimacing at the tacky feeling of his feet meeting the floor. He braced himself for the rush of cold he knew would follow as he opened the door. Kakashi stood across the threshold, another suspicious cloth bag in his arms as he smiled innocently. “No.” Iruka shut the door again.  
  
Half a second later, an odd feeling niggled to the surface as he realised he hadn't heard the semi-standard protest he'd expected and he wrenched the door open again just in time to watch a puff of fog and snowflakes dissipate. A clone!  
  
“Kakashi-sensei,” he shouted, already turning and running back towards the living room, door slamming shut as the greedy wind snatched it closed behind him.  
  
The jounin in question was just making a perfect 3-point landing from the window, setting his boots in the empty box left over from Sakura's gingerbread when Iruka slipped on a stray sock, skidded past the living room doorway, and went crashing into the wall at the end of the hall. The chuunin crawled back, panting as he waved the sock like a madman.  
  
“Your sock! Why is it on my floor! And the door! Use the door!” Iruka shouted, not knowing what it was he was really annoyed about.  
  
“Maa, sensei, I _did_ come to the door. You _saw_ me,” Kakashi shrugged, eye widening at the sight of Iruka's hair.  
  
“Using a clone to knock on the door so you can sneak in through the window is _not_ the same as actually _using_ it,” Iruka accused, still waving the sock around. “And your sock!”  
  
“Thank you for that,” Kakashi chirped, snatching the sock from Iruka's menacing grip. “It's always so nice when you do my laundry for me.”  
  
Iruka glared a thousand imaginative deaths at the jounin. Kakashi smiled nervously, casting about for a distraction. “Ah, nice hairdo. It's... unique.”  
  
Iruka's eyes widened and he scrambled towards the bathroom shouting, “What is it _this_ time!”.  
  
Kakashi smirked at Iruka's horrified cries, gleefully settling himself in the space the chuunin had been about to occupy before the untimely interruption. He wiggled his fingers at Shisha-kun and Ukki-san who waved back as a breeze swept in through the window. He frowned, stood again and went to close the window. He _did_ have manners after all.  
  
“A nest. It was a bird's nest again,” Iruka mumbled as he wandered back in scrubbing a towel over his head, oblivious to Kakashi happily nesting himself in _his_ preferred spot at the kotatsu. Iruka blindly made his way to where he had been about to sit before, bent his knees, sighed, and found himself in someone's lap. He froze, fingers twitching in the towel.  
  
Iruka sat in numb silence for a moment, mesmerized by the breathing next to him. He tensed as he felt Kakashi shift against his side, arms moving. He panicked and tried to think of something calm and unaffected to say but the time for that had already passed and he was still sitting like a kind of idiot in Kakashi's lap with his hands holding a towel over his head. He opened his mouth to speak when he felt fingers close around his wrists. He battled slightly as Kakashi tried to pull his arms down and lost.  
  
He was still gaping like a dead fish when the towel came down, pulling damp strands of hair with it. Kakashi's amused eye met his before it closed in his signature smile. “Ah, there you are,” he crowed, patting at Iruka's head as if he was congratulating a puppy. “And the nest is gone!”  
  
Iruka felt his face flush and the trance broke. He slapped at Kakashi who laughed as Iruka tried to scramble to his feet in a dignified manner. With his hair loose and tousled, he looked more like a sleepy child than the avenging shinobi he was.  
  
“Why are you in my seat, Kakashi-sensei,” Iruka barked, trying to sit and shove the jounin aside at the same time.  
  
“I don't see your name on it,” Kakashi retorted, immovable without trying. Iruka huffed and tried to shove him harder.  
  
“This is _my_ house. I don't _need_ to have my name on anything. It's implied that everything here _is_ mine,” he argued, pushing against Kakashi's shoulder with his head.  
  
“My socks,” Kakashi asked curiously, leaning back slightly.  
  
“Because I washed them, they're mine now,” Iruka barked, trying to move Kakashi's arm so he could reach his ribs.  
  
“My boots too?” Kakashi peered over his shoulder at the struggling Iruka.  
  
“And the mud on them!” Iruka tried to find the pressure points that would disable Kakashi's arm.  
  
“Hm... Shisha-kun?” Kakashi curiously raised his arm to see what Iruka was going to do next.  
  
“Him too! You left him here! You abandoned him!” Iruka grinned at the opening and began to jab at Kakashi's ribs. Shisha-kun shuddered in sad agreement, though it could have just been a sudden blast of heat from the space heater moving the air.  
  
“Ukki-san?” Kakashi grunted, deciding that leaving his ribs open to attack was a decidedly bad idea never to be repeated as he began to shove back.  
  
“Brothers shouldn't be apart,” Iruka yelped as he toppled over and found himself pinned at the wrists.  
  
“What about me? I'm here too.” Kakashi cocked his head curiously, taking in the violent red heat that chased its way across Iruka's cheeks.  
  
“Wh-what!” Iruka flushed harder at his own stuttering as he tried to kick Kakashi in the stomach.  
  
“Nobody wants me, sensei,” Kakashi whined, delivering a devastating puppy dog eye point-blank at him. “Please take me in!”  
  
“Take you _in_ ,” Iruka yelped. “You hardly ever _leave_! I might as well own you! I feed you enough!”  
  
Kakashi whined with glee and buried his face in Iruka's stomach as he wriggled about. The chuunin shouted and shoved at him, swearing a very violent doom upon his person.  
  
In the end, neither of them had been willing to relinquish that side of the kotatsu and ended up cramped together rather snugly, busily jabbing each other in sensitive areas when Naruto burst in as a loud orange blur, followed by a gloomy looking Sasuke who raised a brow but said nothing at the sight of his teachers snuggling at the kotatsu.  
  
Naruto's loud squawk of surprise at seeing Kakashi on Iruka's side of the table turned to laughter as he promised the Academy sensei would pay the jounin back doubly for infringing. Kakashi, in turn, tried to wrap his arm around Iruka's shoulders while saying his bestest best friend of forever wouldn't do anything to him, but his words were cut off when he took an elbow to the stomach and Iruka took the opportunity to boot him away from the warmth of the kotatsu. Sasuke just rolled his eyes as the jounin playfully moped about while Iruka proclaimed his supremacy to all who cared to listen; namely Naruto and some plants in the corner.  
  
As it turned out Kakashi had invited Naruto and Sasuke over—as if he lived there too!—so they wouldn't be alone at home while it snowed out. He'd invited Sakura as well but she'd _sadly_ declined once she'd gotten an eyeful of the weather.  
  
“So, what's the 'super cool and ultra secret' thing you promised us, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto yelled as he bounced up and down from where Kakashi had sat him. He'd been tempted to tie the boy down as well but he had a feeling Iruka would disagree in the form of something sharp _in_ him somewhere really painful.  
  
“I have...” Kakashi pushed the bag he'd brought, the one they'd forgotten about in the battle for the kotatsu, and peeled back the loose flap dramatically. “ _Chocolate_.”  
  
Naruto looked starry-eyed, then blank. “What's that?”  
  
“Dobe.” Naruto screeched in offense, but Sasuke ignored him. “Chocolate is from the West. Don't you remember seeing it on the train? Some rich woman had some. You said it was bitter and tasted like dirt.”  
  
“Ew. You brought us dirt, Kakashi-sensei? Why would you do that?” Naruto scrunched his face up in his classic “thinking” position which just looked like he was hurting somewhere really private and didn't want to say it.  
  
“I think you've brought enough dirt into my home for several lifetimes,” Iruka concurred.  
  
“Maa, it's only bitter if you don't put something sweet in it. Asuma said you can drink it.” Kakashi scrubbed at the back of his head. “He gave me directions—” he threw a suspicious glance at Iruka just then “and told me they're idiot proof. Even you could do it, Naruto.” Iruka just rolled his eyes at that.  
  
“I don't know, Kakashi-sensei. You've given us some pretty weird stuff and said it was okay before.” Naruto crossed his arms. Iruka shot the jounin a sharp and curious glance. Kakashi felt a bead of sweat pop out at his temple.  
  
“I've had it sweet before and it's good. You're just uneducated, _Do-be_ ,” Sasuke cut in smugly.  
  
“ _TEME,_ TAKE THAT BACK,” Naruto screeched, leaping towards his teammate. Sasuke's fingers danced with lightning as he smirked. The shrill cry of a whistle broke through and a yellow sign flashed between them. Naruto found himself yelping and struggling to reach Sasuke while Kakashi gripped the back of the genin's jacket, looking utterly bored.  
  
“That is yellow card behaviour! Sit down!” Iruka waved the sign and blew his whistle again. Naruto grumbled but settled down, scrambling to Iruka's side once he'd been freed, to hug his favorite teacher. Kakashi twitched at the sight before sitting with a sigh.  
  
“Okay. Now that the preliminary protests and violent interactions are out of the way, we can get to it,” the jounin muttered, pulling out a now-familiar copy of _Icha Icha Paradise_. Iruka groaned. Sasuke and Naruto shot him curious glances which he waved off.  
  
“It says here: Heat milk and don't burn it, stupid.” Kakashi paused to mutter what sounded like “I'm not stupid. _He's_ stupid.” The trio of observers blinked as he came back to himself. “Okay, it says: Heat milk—It doesn't say anything about stupid. Forget all that.” Iruka rolled his eyes. “Add chocolate and stir until melted—don't burn that either—Add to taste. Add dried fruit or berries or sauce as desired, Note:...” Kakashi mumbled what might have been “alcohol” but no one could really tell. “Or honey. Put it in a cup and drink it—slowly. Don't burn yourself. The hospital doesn't... treat... burn wounds... caused by stupidity. I am going to get that bastard.”  
  
“Okay, so this sounds doable,” Iruka cut in, shaking the chocolate tin. “We should thank Asuma-sensei for lending us something like this. Chocolate is very expensive, you know.” He mumbled to himself, “I'm just surprised he's letting us have this. You'd think he'd be giving it to Kurenai-sensei.” It may have been a good thing that he missed the sharp glance Kakashi threw his way. It might have pierced his bubble of calm.  
  
Hot chocolate making was only slightly less disastrous than the gingerbread making had been. They'd initially tried to heat the milk on a hot plate but it reached temperature in a sudden and instant roiling froth that spilled across the table and scorched the plate which was _indeed_ hot as Naruto discovered the hard way by trying to wipe the spilled milk off it which led the two teachers to dub open heating implements of _any_ kind off limits in the presence of genin. Sasuke sulked a little. He was perfectly fine with fire and its kin. Naruto always ruined everything.  
  
As it turned out, Iruka's electric kettle worked just fine as a milk heater and they'd had a ball trying different concoctions, some worse than others. Ramen in hot chocolate was a _terrible_ idea. Even Naruto had to agree. Cinnamon sticks in hot chocolate were _delicious_ (and a good way to use up the excess from a cooking experience gone terribly wrong) and could be used to build little houses after. They'd also discovered that rock sugar went really well with the more bitter of the chocolate concoctions they came up with and Kakashi wrote a note for Gai about it, complete with the most smug henohenomoheji he could draw. All in all, it worked out well, multiple trips to the bathroom and what would most likely be the largest water bill Iruka had yet been served notwithstanding.  
  
Iruka didn't even mind that he'd gotten stuck washing all the dishes when he came back to the living room to see the boys asleep on the floor, Naruto's head pillowed on Sasuke's stomach as the boy drooled slightly, arms flung wide. Sasuke grumbled a bit in his sleep, patting at Naruto's head as he mumbled about a good dog. Kakashi hovered over them like a doting father, surprisingly gentle as he lay a blanket over them. He was humming something that was foreign and cheerful while Shisha-kun and Ukki-san swayed their branches.  
  
“They'll get cavities from not brushing tonight, but they're young. They can always get their teeth pulled,” Kakashi chirped. Iruka glared.  
  
“You want to go home?” The chuunin looked meaningfully towards the dark windows where the snow flurries had piled up. The wind was whipping rather hard at that point, driving home just how uninviting the outdoors were at that moment.  
  
“Iruka-sensei, you are the kindest, most generous and loving person in the whole country,” Kakashi responded solemnly. “You would never throw an innocent—” Iruka threw a pillow at his head. Kakashi caught it and tucked it under his arm before continuing. “—man into the cold, dark—” A blanket hit him in the face and he grinned as he caught it. “You are too kind, sensei.”  
  
Somehow, Iruka didn't know how, Kakashi had managed to convince him to sleep with them in the living room. The jounin had said it was a “family activity” and illuminated by the soft glow of the street lamp outside, lumps of bodies snuggled under covers and in close quarters, it really did seem like they had a bit of a makeshift family; a really dysfunctional one with two crazy daddies who fought all the time, but a family nonetheless.  
  
“So long as you know, I'm not the mommy,” Iruka muttered as he pulled his blanket up to his chin and began to drift off. A soft chuckle drifted through the air but he was already gone.  
  
“Oh yes you are, Iruka-sensei. You even have the hair for it,” Kakashi murmured next to him, patting his head as he snuggled into the jounin's hand unconsciously. Kakashi stroked Iruka's hair thoughtfully and patted Naruto's leg which was now flung across his lap as he began to sing the foreign song again.  
  
“ _Though the weather outside is frightful..._ ”

The wind howled and rattled the windows.

“ _Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> These were originally written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge on Livejournal in 2010, starting with the first day of Christmas (December 25). It's basically all crack and I apologise for nothing.
> 
>  **Vocab Notes**  
>  haft – the handle of a sword
> 
> chinko – penis
> 
> kinako – a powder made from roasted soybeans that tastes a lot like powdered peanut butter [and sometimes a little hint of coffee]
> 
> senbei – rice crackers that can be sweet or salty
> 
> jan-ken-po – also known as ro-sham-bo or rock paper scissors. It's a type of elimination game where players utilise one of three hand formations [a Vee shape, a fist, and a flat open palm] to “defeat” each other and is often used to make decisions where there are two clear options. It is possible to cheat if you can guess the person's coming finger movements by watching your opponents' hands and forming your sign after they do.


End file.
